„O czym rzeczą rzeczy”, czyli wspomnienia rodzinne w powieści Zaziemie Jany Šrámkovej

Abstract

Jana Šrámková, the young Czech writer and journalist (b. 1982 in Vysoké Mýto), published her second biographical novel, Záziemie, in 2013. It is a story about experiencing grief after the death of a close person. Záziemie is divided into short scenes. All of them orbit around the author’s memories of her grandmother and the search for her in herself. In the world of grandmother Noemi, “things are made of put together utterances”, and her granddaughter makes the effort to catch the meaning hidden in them, subtly interwoven in grandmother’s life hour after hour, gesture by gesture. The scenes’ titles themselves signal that things, varying in their shape, form and purpose, are the subject: House, Bird Feeder, Train, Berlin Notebook, Calipers, Stockings, Christmas Tree, Pendulum Clock, Plait, Torts, Stick, Property. We have here things that we can touch, observe, which can move or that are motionless. The author is not partial to the idea of separation between the world of humans and the world of things. In Jana Šrámková’s text the things, even the very trivial ones, were not made into bare details, they are not just a background for such constructions as action or character. They were interwoven into the semantic relations revealing other levels of meaning. They are the things-symbols, things-metaphors, things-allegories. Šrámková attaches a great cognitive value to things of little value, even shoddy, or to meals and other prosaic, everyday items. The whole book is in some ways a praise of things, of that which is voiceless, motionless and mindless.